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Posted in News, Business, Government & Regulation, Transplant PITTSBURGH-A new video game called "Doctor Transplant" will go live and be available as a free download on the Apple App store in April, and Facebook shortly after. Developed by a professor at University of Pittsburgh's school of Public Health to encourage organ donations.

"In this thesis, the objective is to study the technical framworks in game development startups and compare them to medium size game development organizations with established product lines. The thesis was done as qualitative research applying grounded theory method in analysis of the data. Based on the results, the game organizations, regardless of their size, are pleased with the tools they have chosen. The main selection criterias for the tools are support for fast iterations, -sharing and -prototyping regardless of the organization size. Game development projects are adaptable and features can change rapidly. The technical framework in game development has to support these features."

"Abstract: U nderstanding how younger students can learn to collaborate , and affordances of the learning environment that can effectively support this , are critical questions for knowledge sharing, networking and innovation in education. E xploratory research results o n emergent middle schooler collaborative activity in a guided discovery - based learning program are reported . Students in self - organizing game design teams experience certain challenges (e.g., version control), and innovat e solutions. Some indicate meta - knowledge development and socialization gains. We conclude with ongoing questions."

"gaming marketing and social entrepreneurship" organization celebrarting its 8th annual festival this week

Abstract: "This paper presents data analysis from a course on Software Engineeri ng in an effort to identify metric s and techniques that would allow instructor to act proactively and identify patterns of low engagement and inefficient peer collaboration . Over the last two terms, 106 students in their second year of studies formed 20 groups and worked collaboratively to develop video games. Throughout the lab, students have to use a variety of tools for managing and developing their projects, such as software version control , static analysis tools , wikis, mailing lists, etc . The students are also supported by weekly meet ings with teaching assistants and instructors regarding group progress, code quality, and management issues. Through these meeting s and their interactions with the software tools, students leave a detailed trace of data related to their individual engageme nt and their collaboration behavior in their groups . The paper provides discussion on the different source of data that can be monitored , and present preliminary results on how the s e data can be used to analyze students' activity."

"User centric gaming experiences with organic movement"

Abstract: "More and more (IT-)suppliers of- fer services to implement gamication in their customers' organizations [2]. What should be considered when start- ing such a project? What are critical success factors to get users involved? This paper is aimed at identifying ways to improve user involvement, specically by target- ing a target audience by its demographics. It aims to do so through literature research and interviews about com- pleted projects. The goal of this research is to add an overview of not only the aforementioned success factors but also a view on if and how they are applied."

Abstract: "The advantage of using app verses tradition browsing on mobile devices in the market can improve communication with customer. Allowing more creative way to promote brand and advertise to the growing crowd of mobile ecommerce. Mobile apps will be a great tool to simplify the customer‟s path to products that they value in the future as mobile market grows larger and more complex. Organizations that fail to see and act on the potential of the growing mobile market will get left behind. Additionally those that can simplify mobile commerce, making commerce more interactive with less hassle, give customer the experience they want, more secure, and put all that in the palm of a customer‟s hand will be able to ride the trend to success."

From the abstract: "Collective Artificial Intelligence (CAI) simulates human intelligence from data contributed by many humans, mined for inter-related patterns. This thesis applies CAI to social role-playing, introducing an end-to-end process for compositing recorded performances from thousands of humans, and simulating open-ended interaction from this data. The CAI process combines crowdsourcing, pattern discovery, and case-based planning. Content creation is crowdsourced by recording role-players online. Browser-based tools allow non-experts to annotate data, organizing content into a hierarchical narrative structure. Patterns discovered from data power a novel system combining plan recognition with case-based planning. The combination of this process and structure produces a new medium, which exploits a massive corpus to realize characters who interact and converse with humans. This medium enables new experiences in videogames, and new classes of training simulations, therapeutic applications, and social robots. .... As a proof of concept, a CAI system has been evaluated by recording over 10,000 performances in The Restaurant Game, automating an AI-controlled waitress who interacts in the world, and converses with a human via text or speech. Quantitative results demonstrate CAI supports significantly open-ended interaction with humans, while focus groups reveal factors for improving engagement."

The International Serious Play Awards is a recognition program honoring outstanding examples of single player serious game titles that deliver high quality of engagement and measurable training or learning opportunities. Any organization or individual that has created or contracted for a serious game or simulation using commercial off the shelf (COTS) platforms is eligible to enter the International Serious Play Awards Program." Deadline May 31, 2012, June 30, 2012 for student entries

"In spring 2011 University of Tampere Game Research Lab in collaboration with Aalto University organized a working paper seminar with the aim of bringing together scholars of games and innovation from diverse fields and stimulating dialogue between them. Moreover, the goal of the seminar was to encourage the further development of rigorous academic research on the topic while keeping the work accessible to game professionals."

"The appearance of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media, and video games has altered the way individuals and organizations relate to one another.[i] There is no longer any need to wait on professionals to share material and report on new developments. Today, people communicate directly in an unmediated and unfiltered manner."

"UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference™ Europe (GDC Europe), have added fourteen of Europe's leading game developers to the advisory boards of the event's main conference and summits to help program the lectures, panels and roundtable sessions taking place at GDC Europe 2012 this August."

"The high cost of launching resources from the Earth's surface is a significant barrier to future long- duration human space exploration. A future resource economy in space may allow resource production, processing, storage, and transportation at distributed locations, but will have many stakeholders with var- ied and potentially competing objectives. Simulation games provide a medium for communication and learning richer than papers or linear presentations by combining the technical capabilities of simulation models with human interaction. Building on technology powering military wargames, federated simulation architectures such as HLA-Evolved use independently-developed simulation models connected over a dis- tributed network of computers. This paper presents an approach for developing a multi-player simulation gaming environment where human players take on roles of organizations or government agencies within scenarios designed to address the design and operation of a resource economy in space. The game design addresses the number of players, time advancement, level of abstraction, scenario selection, and other de- cisions based on past simulation games in the domains of military-political, educational, disaster response, and business-management games. Future research will focus on evaluating game executions to analyze human decision-making under various scenarios. Quantitative analysis of decisions using game logs com- bined with qualitative analysis of interviews and surveys will contribute to strategies for a future resource economy in space."

from Proceedings of the 12th European Conference of Knowledge Management Academic Conferences Limited

Games for Health Salon by Gaming with a purpose On December 1, 2011 the Association ‘Gaming with a Purpose’ organized a Salon on ‘Games for Health’ in Vienna. Local experts explained and discussed Games for Health.(features videos and presentation slides)

"In cross-functional teams, team performance depends on how skillfully function managers carry out the cross-function coordination of team members' complementary expertise and activities. In this paper, we argue (i) that function managers' coordination skills develop in part through the coordination experience gained from interacting with managers from other function, (ii) that coordination experience has general and firm-specific dimensions, and (iii) that coordination experience leads to better team performance. Using data on development teams in the electronic games industry, we show that coordination experience and its general and firm-specific components have a positive impact on the commercial success of electronic games, and that this effect is robust to tests for omitted variables and reverse causality. Our results have implications for the theory of learning and coordination in teams and for the practice of team design in project-based organizations."

"Organized by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, GDC 2013 is the game industry's most comprehensive and longest running professionals-only event where game developers converge for a week of learning, networking and inspiration. GDC 2013 will take place March 25 - 29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Session proposals can be submitted via the official GDC website at www.gdconf.com. PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1ifpS) "

Abstract: "Citizen science is a form of social computation where members of the public are recruited to contribute to scientific investigations. Citizen-science projects often use web-based systems to support collaborative scientific activities, making them a form of computer-supported cooperative work. However, finding ways to attract participants and confirm the veracity of the data they produce are key issues in making such systems successful. We describe a series of web-based tools and games currently under development to support taxonomic classification of organisms in photographs collected by citizen-science projects. In the design science tradition, the systems are purpose-built to test hypotheses about participant motivation and techniques for ensuring data quality. Findings from preliminary evaluation and the design process itself are discussed."

The protein folding game Foldit shows that games are an effective way to recruit, engage and organize ordinary citizens to help solve difficult scientific problems. Modern science is filled with challenges of massive scale.